Actual Cast Time = Paperdoll Cast Time + Latency Time + Human Error

The thing of interest is human error. The new spell queue apparently is flawed, and the faster you hit your spell cast button, the better.

So, you either have the choice of pounding your spell button, or downloading autokey.

http://elitistjerks.com/746707-post1423.html

That leaves the final part of human error: actually targeting someone to heal. For this I’d recommend a small raid frame, so something like a 5×5 grid with a width of 1 inch would be very beneficial.

http://wowwebstats.com/cyzc4n5gqxwv3?s=1815-2222&bl=0&fia=28&fiaa=a&fit=1

This is the last WWS we have of RoS, which is the only time I use full haste (subbing signet of the quiet forest in with haste over the exalted Hyjal ring.) It was only the second time I had worked with 5x haste, but for the second phase, you’ll see I was maintaining 5 for the most part.

As an aside I’m fully capable of keeping and maintaining a 4x LB cycle without haste, I think I’m honestly still adjusting to the gcd spark and when it’s safe to hit the keys vs. being too early or too late.

And as for your suggested cycles, mine right now typically is a variant of the first (I really only use significant haste when RG raid healing is useful):
1: 3xLB tank, rejuv tank, Raid RG, Raid RG
2: Refresh LB, RG Tank, Raid RG, Raid RG
3: Refresh LB, rejuv tank, Raid RG, Raid RG
4: Refresh LB, Raid RG, Raid RG, Raid RG

Rinse & repeat.

I’d also note that while on paper all 3 options you presented require 118 haste, the first option having only 4 casts per cycle makes it slightly easier to maintain. I like your idea of a “double paper doll” rule. I think I’d go with:
Haste Required = (Paper Doll Haste)*(1+X/4) where X is the number of spells required in the cycle. It varies by person, but that puts me at 226 haste for the current cycle (which I occasionally lose but not often with 221 haste), and 254 haste for a 5LB cycle (which is what I’m aiming for, cause I can’t manage it yet).

Edit: That’s a shame you got a warning for your post, I didn’t realize that. I have to say my only issue was I couldn’t make the jump in your math for some reason and had to work it out for myself to confirm it was right. Kudos to you though if you could see the path with fewer steps.

Oh and also, the LB bloom only requires 2069. I sit around 2400 raid buffed in my haste set, so on fights like Gurtogg where you’re letting the bloom expire it’s also very useful (that’s also how I start out P3 ROS).

On Hyjal trash my guild rarely uses four tanks, much less five so wasn’t even thinking about your situation. We rely on imp bliz, and, when possible, necro hasted tanks to control waves. At one point we did use a prot pali, which would be superior on paper. Unfortunately, in practice our other tanks would become bored during trash and take a mental vacation, so on heavy abom waves our prot pali would get insta gibed by a knockdown (since he was tanking nearly the entire wave). In your situation spell haste for additional rejuv or triple stack lifebloom would rock, but I wonder about the raid as a whole.

There are many different ways to skin a cat, so take this with a grain of salt, but back when I was learning Hyjal we struggled to make it through Azgalor trash. Things have changed since then, 2 sets of badge gear are out and s3 arena gear, but your raid may have issues getting through those waves with so many tanks (and therefore less DPS). If you are running into the problem where you can’t drink between waves, a haste set that doesn’t have much mana regen could become problematic. Then again, those combat mana pots you can buy with pvp marks are a godsend.

@Kalaghan: Hah, thank you hitting my logic from a different angle. I’m not in the business of cast canceling HT, unless there are no other tank healers around. That nearly never happens, but there are of course exceptions. Being the first into a Kalc portal comes to mind. Since my shameful EJ post (branded with a warning, so disappointing how one sentence completely devalues an entire post), and now this one, I admit spell haste is growing on me. Even if it wasn’t, I’m forced into it with sunwell gear.

Maybe I worded things poorly, but I meant that on paper regrowth is better for raid healing than lifebloom on paper . Regrowth on paper nets a much bigger spell haste bonus than lifebloom on paper, making it an even better raid heal choice. In a world where mana is of no concern (hah), you have to keep a swiftmendable hot on the tank(s), and not using a ridiculously high paperdoll haste value (general rule of thumb double whatever haste value you find on paper) rotations while would look like…

Single Tank = triple LB tank, RG tank/raid, RG raid, RG raid = 118 haste on paper
Two Tank = Triple LB tank, Triple LB tank, RG tank, LB raid, LB raid = 118 haste on paper
Three Tank = Triple LB tank, Triple LB tank, Triple LB tank, RJ tank, LB/RJ raid/tank = 118 haste on paper

You can get better gains if you run at ~250 spell haste paperdoll, but that would require ~500 haste depending on human reflexes/steady connection.

As to single stack lifebloom raid healing, I really wonder if getting a 5th one is worth it. Given that the final bloom is usually overhealed, lets focus in on the hot portion. It takes an obscenely high amount of +heal, 3000, to have spell haste be better. Spell haste has less, and less of an effect how far off 3,000 +heal you are. Depending on what your overall +heal is, at some point, effective healing would get a better return using a single stack, even if you are in a situation of +100 heal vs 5th gcd. I don’t have the time to number crunch this, but am masochistic enough to find the answer sooner than later. Maybe going as far as to dust off my hot overheal tracking mod.

@Sheshonk, you made it sound in your comment that spell haste is only useful to raid healing, but this is not what i ment with my email to phae, after just doing this 1st boss and 2nd boss in MH, a situation where i am pretty much just healing the tanks it allows for a great set of combinations of hots on the tanks which increases your healing alot on the tanks. For example some other times we have done this fight there has been two resto druids, it took me and the other druid alot of work to test out and trial different healing combinations together that net together to produce a huge amount of healing on the tanks, which fluctuates over focusing on different tanks depending on the situation mid-pull. Having some spell haste gear for this situation even thou there is no raid healing means you could get an extra lifebloom stack up, or and extra reju, which would have been highly useful in that situation.

(ty for the people that have left your comments

The difference between your two LB1 (i.e. tank 1) hits is only 6 seconds despite the 2 seconds of lag. What would matter though is if the first occured with 0 latency and then your latency spiked to 2s. In that case you’d have a difference of 8 seconds between LB hits, meaning you lose your stack.

Because of this, what matters is:
How stable your connection is.
How fast your computer is.
How fast you are.

I’m sitting at 221 haste right now and still cannot consistently maintain 5LB stacks. I have never had an issue maintaining 4 with 0 haste, and generally had room to spare. Consider that with a 4 cast cycle you have 1 second of “error” space, or 0.25 seconds to waste per cast. To have the same 0.25 seconds to ‘waste’ per cast, you’d have to get 5LBs in 5.75seconds, a GCD of 1.15seconds. That would require 478 spell haste which is not at all feasible. Generally it’s accepted that around 200 spell haste it might be feasible to keep 4 up, I’m personally aiming for 250 minimum though and doubt I’ll be confident until 275-300 range. You have much less room for error even at that level of haste. It’s often better to be sure and keep 4-stacks up rather than go for jackpot with 5 and lose a stack at a critical moment.

Also, Sheshonk raises a really good point about HPS that’s not to be overlooked (math here: http://elitistjerks.com/724279-post864.html). However, the reality of the situation is that you are more often trading regen for spell haste. I’d also note though, because of this I will also always socket for +heal even in my haste set.

All that said, haste rocks. I use my haste set on 9 out of the 14 T6 boss fights (varies a bit depending on heal assignments). Haste changes combined with improved efficiency in 2.4 have made regrowth a much more important part of my healing arsenal. What it’s really done is allowed us to raid heal effectively in fights that don’t cater to druids quite as well. You can fit more regrowths in, and you can get them off faster. I’m actually able to contribute to random burst raid damage now, and can even compete with Shaman chain heals on fights like Gorefiend now. I also burn mana much faster in this set, and so feel there’s a use to my massive regen (and also equip my regrowth trinket with this set). Pre-haste, I had accepted that there were certain fights where I would never top the meter, but now it’s a viable goal in every encounter.

Sheshonk, you’ve commented that you think you should do everything you can to focus on tank healing so spell haste isn’t that useful. However, I believe there’s a point where the marginal gains on tank healing are outweighed by the vast gains on raid healing. Your comparison of regrowth vs. LB for raid heals isn’t fair, because a much higher % of the regrowth heal will typically hit when compared to a LB raid heal. Further, I think you have to agree at some point improved raid healing outweighs the minor hot strength increase on the tank (I lose about 100 healing for my 221 haste). Otherwise, you would be cancel-casting HTs on the MT between HOT refreshes, not raid healing (and I’m betting with that kind of single target focus treeform wouldn’t be needed either, at least not for mana efficiency). And of course, if that’s what you’re doing then haste benefits the HTs drastically so you could actually improve your tank healing with a haste set as well.

Sorry for the double post!

Heal Touch 969.15
Rejuvenation 2,324.75
Regrowth (DH) -966.81
Regrowth (HoT) 1,940.42
Lifebloom (HoT) 3,022.11
Triple Stack (HoT) 3,022.11
Lifebloom (Bloom) 2,068.69

Please note that a negative number means that you need 0 +heal for spell haste to be more effective!

As its been said, the only two boss fight situations where 5 triple stacks can be used are Kael ph2 and RoS ph3. So the benefits to spell haste are for raid healing, not boss healing.

Keeping this in mind, what can you do with Regrowth? Yes, it is mana intensive, but it will net the best results with spell haste.

So, could see a single tank rotations like…
LB, RG, RG, RG
Which requires the same amount of haste, 118, in a perfect world.

Some quick napkin math puts this rotation about 400 HPS higher than a triple stack lifebloom and 4 single stack lifeblooms. Of course the mana requirement is off the wall, but hey, show regrowth some haste loving too!

Personally I give much higher priority to +heal than spell haste. I’m consistantly on tank healing, and believe I should be doing everything in my power to perform my role the best at it that I can. Any raid healing I do is just icing on the cake. It’s a great strength that resto druids can raid heal while tank healing with nearly no loss of efficiency (no gcd for swiftmend/NS), however, they don’t have the tool set to raid heal effectively. Using regrowth/lifebloom for raid healing is like trying to ram a square peg in a round hole, those spells just aren’t made for it. I sometimes wonder if regrowth is made for anything, but thats for another time. I leave maximizing raid healing to CoH and Brain Heal, I’ll help where I can, but I don’t allow raid healing to take away from my job, tank healing, in raids.

With that being said, iLvl from items is not always a straight +Heal vs Spell Haste. Spell haste sucks up iLvl from stam, int, spirit, and mp5. There are a bunch of items that you can pick up where you sacrifice no +heal. Gems are a different story however…

@Nichgoul It is certainly interesting that you use 5 tanks on Hyjal trash waves. I was just wondering how your raid is set up. Does your guild just have a lot of well geared tanks?